


You For the Moment

by kaithartic (bluedreaming)



Series: Lana Del Rey Oneshots [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1487179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedreaming/pseuds/kaithartic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life in a small town is too limiting for Jongin's dreams after high school, but can he leave his boyfriend Sehun behind?</p>
            </blockquote>





	You For the Moment

**Author's Note:**

> I was working on a longer story that I should be finishing but heard Lana Del Rey's new song "West Coast" and couldn't resist. This was written one evening in a daze of over-caffeination and post-Easter gathering exhaustion with "West Coast" on repeat and a mug of hot chocolate in hand.

"I'm leaving."

They're in the midst of grabbing a bite to eat on their lunch hour from the garage where they work, and Sehun had just idly been wondering what he was going to do with his life after graduation when Jongin throws a grenade into the otherwise dull and dusty summer day.

Sehun swallows thickly over the sharp lump that has suddenly appeared in his throat and puts down his sandwich.

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm leaving," Jongin repeats doggedly, looking at the scorching sky, at the dying trees, at the oil-slick on the cement, anything but Sehun's face.

Sehun doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything. He's always known that Jongin is more than their small-town life: skipping high school to play pool at the local bar, afternoons working at the gritty mechanic shop, kissing in the alley under the cover of dark and dance practice tucked into the corners of the night out of the suspicious gaze of their small-town-minded parents. But somehow he's never expected anything to change. They'll graduate, work at the mechanic shop, drift apart, break each other's hearts, get random high school dropouts knocked up and be manhandled into shotgun marriages, spend the evenings drinking to avoid screaming babies and nagging wives, and die early of drunk-driving or cirrhosis of the liver. That's just the ways things are.

But Jongin wants to change that.

"I'm leaving after graduation," he says.

Sehun just sits there, in the noon heat. There's nothing to say.

They've done the customary toss of graduation caps in the air and Sehun has even managed to brush Jongin's arm as he walked past, earning him a furtive grin. School is officially over, and Jongin hasn't said anything more about leaving. He's hopeful that it was just a bottle dream, a product of long hours and sunstroke, and that Jongin wasn't actually serious. Through a quick gesture and twist of the brow they agree to meet in the desert out past the abandoned factory at the edge of town once it gets dark.

Dinner, however, stretches out late because his father is home for once, albeit still disgustingly drunk, and he doesn't want to leave his mom alone. He earns a cuff to the cheek for his trouble, but at least his dad stumbles, cursing, off to the bar again and he can pack his mom safely off to his aunt's place for the night.

So by the time he makes it out to their rendezvous, he's already late and he can see that Jongin has been getting impatient.

"Where were you?" He glares at Sehun before pulling him in, dry lips crushed against wet teeth, tongues stretching to bridge the gap between them.

They don't talk for a couple minutes. It's been too long since they've been able to meet like this, school and work and parents moving in like heavy walls threatening to crush the air out of their lungs.

Sehun wants to take things further, the fire that has been smouldering inside his chest has roared back into a bonfire and he feels like he's going to be burnt alive, but as soon as the arm he has wrapped around Jongin drifts below his lower back, he pulls back, breaking them apart.

Sehun is left standing there, bewildered, fingers grasping at air, the fire in his chest licking at his throat and he can hardly breathe. But one look at Jongin's face and it's like he's been drenched with a bucket of ice from the bottom of the beer cooler at the local bar after closing.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," Jongin says, arm reaching out towards Sehun's face but his fingers only ghost above his swollen cheek and don't touch.

His voice is quiet but there's steel in it too; he won't be changing his mind. There's nothing to say. Sehun stands there, smoke from the doused fire filling his throat, pouring out of his eyes and down his cheeks, as Jongin turns and walks away through the dark towards the lights of the town glinting in the distance.

Jongin's father stops by the garage the next day, drunk and screaming, but Sehun keeps his mouth shut and takes the beating without a word. Afterwards, he picks himself up off the oil-stained cement as best he can and limps back to work. There's nothing else he can do.

His mom gives up talking to him after a week, when it's clear he isn't capable or willing to respond. Instead they endure the summer's fierce heat with eyes glazed and tongues thirst-swollen and silent, eyes downcast as they skirt their own issues. As for his dad, Sehun isn't sure he's even noticed. Not that he cares much anyway.

In the fall, he gets asked to stay on at the garage and accepts, because there's nothing else he can do. He hasn't heard from Jongin, whose dad has stopped coming around. His bruises lighten from angry purple into green and fade slowly as winter approaches.

He avoids his old classmates at first, Jongin and he never wanted much to do with them during school, preferring secret dance practice and midnight trysts to rowdy drunken parties with skimpily-clad girls and cheap beer. But one day after work, stumbling home in the dark and shivering, he gets dragged into the bar and one beer leads to another. Soon he's wandering home with a bottle in hand, cursing Jongin in his head and kicking cans out of the road.

It becomes a habit; it's easier to breathe when the scorched mess of his chest is well-sodden with beer and stronger things. He avoids his mom's disappointed eyes and disappears into his room after eating, before if the corrosive, slopping mess of his stomach won't let him keep anything down. As for his dad, he doesn't come home anymore. No one cares anyway.

He kisses a girl at the bar one night; she crawled into his lap and it was just a reflex, the accidental contact turning into a wet and sloppy exchange of saliva, both of them drunk out of their minds and pawing at each other desperately in the alley behind the bar, their messy affair dimly lit by a sputtering streetlight. Afterwards, stumbling home clutching the remnants of his clothing, Sehun finds himself doubled over in the gutter, puking his guts out.

He stops going to the bar after that, and his mom stops looking at him with that wounded expression he hates so much; it's not like he's ever hit her or yelled her that much, he's not his dad, except he is and he knows it. He doesn't go to the bar but he buys his bottles by the dozen and secrets them in the old abandoned factory that used to see other, better, things, but now only plays host to his drunken, crying binges where he empties bottle after bottle before throwing up in the warm sand. It's been a year now.

It's been a year since he's said anything to anyone at all, his heart no longer leaps in his chest and his once bright vision is sunken and dull as he makes his way to the abandoned factory after work, the path so worn into the muddy trenches of his brain that he doesn't even have to think, his leaden feet pulling his empty mind along behind. He can already feel the alcohol pouring down his throat, keeping the fire in his chest at bay.

So he's surprised to see the silhouette leaning against the shadows of the factory wall, twirling an empty bottle. His heart sputters to a stop.

The painfully familiar figure unfolds itself from the dark, and walks forward.

"Hi."

Jongin looks different. He's taller, or maybe it's just the way he stands. His eyes that used to have stars peeking out from their inky depths are now dotted with a brilliant galaxy ablaze, and Sehun can't tear his hungry gaze away. The dying fire in his chest has caught sparks, and is threatening to explode.

"I love it there, on the west coast," Jongin says. "I can dance there, I'm part of a group, and I'm going to school."

Sehun has his mouth open but he can't breathe.

"But I realized that, even if I was happy there, there was still something missing: a hole in my heart."

He's pretty sure that the fire in his chest has completely engulfed his heart by now, because it isn't beating through the loud roar of the flames filling his ears.

"So I came back." Jongin reaches out his arm, fingers ghosting above Sehun's cheek, and this time his fingers touch the skin and slide around to cup his face. "Will you come with me?"

The fire in his chest has devoured his heart entirely but as he opens his mouth to speak for the first time in over a year, he can feel a new beating flowering thing rising from its ashes.

"Yes."

**Author's Note:**

> The lyrics to the song can be found [ here](http://rock.rapgenius.com/Lana-del-rey-west-coast-lyrics) and the official audio [here](http://youtu.be/o3SqUUoJjW8). This story was written in one short word-vomit of a session and so I'll probably make minor grammatical and spelling edits over the next little bit.


End file.
